


Hardships of War

by Xuan_Tian_Shang_Ti



Category: Original Work
Genre: Author doesn't know anything, Author doesn't know who that good guys are, Author doesn't know who the bad guys are, Author doesn't know who the hero is, Gen, High Fantasy, One Shot, Original Magic, Original Races, Original World, Starts without context, author doesn't know how to tag
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-29
Updated: 2017-11-29
Packaged: 2019-02-08 09:57:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,972
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12862113
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Xuan_Tian_Shang_Ti/pseuds/Xuan_Tian_Shang_Ti
Summary: The fifth year in the War of Daityan Aggression, a war that sees thousands dead each month. Adventurers flocked to the side of being paid, fighting for whomever would give them the most money. The unified Daitya Warbands press hard against the Caw cities, massacring their hapless townsfolk. And so it is that a brave, multi-ethnic band of warriors from all walks of life are summoned to hold off the evil Warmaster Kop and his elite strike team as another town is evacuated....sounds like something out of a bleeding spirit story





	Hardships of War

**Author's Note:**

> So, a special thanks to Remi, Cder and Ilesonce for helping in various ways to realise this world. This is a piece for a fantasy world that's been floating around the vast emptiness that is my brain for a while now...I hope it's ok and makes sense :)

“The fifth year in the War of Daityan Aggression, a war that sees thousands dead each month. Adventurers flocked to the side of being paid, fighting for whomever would give them the most money. The unified Daitya Warbands press hard against the Caw cities, massacring their hapless townsfolk. And so it is that a brave, multi-ethnic band of warriors from all walks of life are summoned to hold off the evil Warmaster Kop and his elite strike team as another town is evacuated.” The speaker, a small pale boy of about nineteen, paused and looked at his companion, “What d’ya think? Sounds like something out of a bleeding spirit story, don’t it? All we need a traitor and we got the whole thing.”

His companion shot him a disapproving frown as he stole yet another swig from the mug on the table, “What I think, Sotet, is that Aramevo with shit alcohol tolerance shouldn’t be stealing sips from my cup. Anyway, stop over dramatizing this bloody war. The Daitya aren’t coming to this bloody backwater and we’re here cause dear old dad thought that we’d be a good token force to offer up to the Alliance without over committing any forces.”

Sotet rose, swaying, and stumbled around to Sviesa, words slurring as his drunken rage sped past his brain. “Ya know what I th-th-reckon? I reckon yer too bleedin cynical. Thish wash meantta be fun, we were gonna explore da whooole damn world an’ nuffink wash gonna shtop us. Now yer a bleedin dog tied up to da-da-daddy. Imma-”

He got no further in his drunken tirade, collapsing like the first attempts at peace as the alcohol finally caught up with him. Sviesa rose, catching and hoisting him over his shoulder in one smooth movement. “Come on, let’s get you to bed,” he muttered to the unconscious form.

As Sviesa climbed the stairs to their rented room, he reflected on their situation. He didn’t begrudge Sotet’s drunken tirades, frequent as they were becoming. The kid had a point. When they’d set off from the Muzigas-Aramevo court all those years ago they’d both been kids. Heads full of dreams of being the next great heroes. It’d been so simple, a runaway prince and his servant against the world, finding friends along the way, honing their magic and then eventually coming home and leading their people into the next golden age. They’d found their friends, Danak, Lutka and Shtark, but then they’d hit a rough patch. Taking on new members had stretched their wallets to breaking point, and along the way he’d had to grow up. He was responsible for all of them now, for finding jobs, food and shelter. He’d matured faster than he’d ever wanted to. 

Sotet was still living in their dreamland. Where Sviesa had been forced to face reality, Sotet had retreated into his head. It was almost amusing really, the role reversal. Sotet wanted the story, he wanted to be known, to rise above his station, but he didn’t want to sacrifice anything. It wasn’t that he didn’t have power or skill, Aramevo were amongst the most magically powerful of all the races, but he just couldn’t let go of anything he considered his. When he got drunk he got emotional and lashed out, and felt terrible for it later.

Sviesa nudged the door of their shared room open, cringing as the hinges squeaked in protest at even that token movement. As quietly as he could, he made his way over to the bed further from the desk and gently lay his friend down, covering him with a blanket. He wanted to sleep, spirits knew, but he had to go over the finances. His father was paying them well for this babysitting job, but the five of them managed to find the weirdest expenses, even with using magical shortcuts. Dragging his hand down his face he made a little sweeping gesture with his hand, summoning the flames off the candle wicks. Another gesture had them growing brighter, multiplying and splitting, bathing the desk in light. 

Things were looking better financially, they weren’t in the red this month. They weren’t comfortably in the black; Danak needed more papers and inks for his songs, Lutka needed furs and leathers for his transformation totems and Shtark needed all manner of outlandish things for his experiments. He might have to cut one of them off at some point, but then Sotet would complain and that wasn’t something he wanted to go through again. 

Jobs had been going bad for a while now. It was never anyone’s fault, but they were failing all but the simplest of jobs. Maybe they were just getting over ambitions, with five members Sviesa had been taking more and more difficult requests, but repeated failure was still a kick in the teeth. All three of them had been nothing but a hinderan… – no, he cut that thought off before it continued. He was the captain, he treated everyone fairly and managed anything even remotely difficult. Sotet was, for all that he was the same age as him, the little brother of the team. He said what he wanted, and what everyone was thinking, and got away with it because he was so naive. Danak, Lutka and Shtark were all the muscle, they brought a broad magical talent with them.

He snapped upright as something tingled down his spine. Someone had tripped a ward. Rising, he made his way over to the door and ripped it open, careless of the squeal of hinges. He stumbled down the stairs, focus on the incoming group. 

“Everyone up! Daitya Raiders incoming! Twenty, maybe thirty! Fifteen minutes out!” His voice whipped out, calling his men to attention. “Danak, get a song going, I want fodder. Lutka, you’re going out with them in the first wave. Shtark, guard the town, try to get Sotet up. I’ll greet them.”  
With the two flanking him, Sviesa charged through the town gates. As he ran he knew each of them was summoning up their magic, he could hear Danak’s humming and smell the rank foulness of Lutka’s hide collection. Then they were mere details as he began his own ritual. Throughout the town every fire simultaneously flickered and then began streaming towards the running trio, surrounding them in a warm embrace.

As they reached the town gates he grabbed their warming cloak and lashed out with it, an enormous, flaming snake forming as an extension of his wrist. With surgical precision he lashed out, sending the snakes streaming towards the enemy. It would cost them the element of surprise he knew, but it would rob the raiders of their night vision. If he could blind them then he could incinerate them. They wouldn’t have to risk anything.

The hope lasted all of a minute. He swallowed one or two in the immediate blindness, but someone in the enemy force was clever, dangerously so. The surge of magic that emanated from them was wasteful but effective. The raw output managed the magic in the snakes, deflecting them again and again. But they also lost something other than magical energy in that, the feel of the output was familiar to them all, “It’s bloody Kop! Fuck, wave one forward, I need help!”

Lutka rushed forward, form contorting as he ran, changing into the horrific midpoint between wolf, eagle, octopus and Kesful that was his battle form.

Sviesa stumbled, snakes flickering out of existence, as the ground rose into clumsy earthen humanoids. He ignored the apology as the golems charged forward, bathing himself in the soothing sound of Danak’s music as he played his song of death. It was calming, and hauntingly beautiful, and helped to keep him from lashing out and biting off the head of their summoner for doing what he told him to.

A roar filled the air as Lutka met with the enemy, their fight illuminated by the burning grass from the rebounded fire. With the immediate danger of incineration gone the raw power had subsided, letting Lutka’s strangely agile form dart into the big, lumbering figures. He tripped them with tentacles, sliced with claws when they were on the ground. An axe lashed out, nearly slicing off a tentacle, but he flared his wings jumping over the blow and ripping the attacker’s throat out with his teeth as he flipped over. 

Then the golems were in the fight, hacking away gracelessly at everything else. They were a stark contrast to Lutka’s grace, all brutal efficiency. Even as a lucky raider managed to destroy three, five mobbed him from behind, forcing him to the ground and beating the life out of him with meaty squelching sounds.

The shock only lasted for a little longer than the initial attack, but six of the raiders were already down. However, any hope of quickly ending the melee was dashed as a voice called out, hollering at the enemy in the native Daityan tongue. There was that burst of magic again, sending Lutka and the golems flying. Then the raiders fell upon them, with an efficiency that only the Daitya could manage. Lutka managed to dodge and kept doing so until a lucky blow clipped his wing. His screaming could just be heard over the melee, pain and terror in every word “No! Please no! Boss! Help!”

Danak’s song faltered and his voice was quiet and full of pain, “Boss, I can’t – none of my toys are – I don’t know. You can save him right?”

Frustrated tears prickled at his eyes as Sviesa reached out and grabbed the heat in the air. Keeping them invisible, he reformed his snakes. “I can’t think of anything either,” he admitted, making the invisible heat hotter and hotter, hot enough to make his hands blister and char. He knew what he had to say, bitter and hollow as it tasted in his mouth, “I’m sorry, I know you were friends.”  
Danak’s realisation came a moment too late, golems grabbing Sviesa just as the snake struck into the centre of the Daitya, detonating. 

There was a flash. A burst of heat intense enough to make skin crack. This was followed by a banshee howl as air rushed back in, bringing stinging cold with it. Then there was a moment of perfect silence, a pause as everyone looked themselves over, then looked to their friends. A good ten of the enemy had perished in the blow, but there was a loss too.

“You fucking killed him! We could have- could have… FUCK! I don’t know! We could have rushed them! We could have saved him…” Danak trailed off, sobs choking his voice. 

Danak straightened up, face stretched by rage and stained with tears. A gesture had a second wave of golems rise up and go charging at the Daitya. Danak ignored the sounds of battle that flowed around them, focusing wholly on his friend’s murderer. He made another gesture, one Sviesa hadn’t seen before, and bared his teeth as the golems holding him started to move. His voice was low and threatening, but still just audible over the fighting, “They’ll break you, piece by tiny piece. If I can pay back even a fraction of what you did to him, you’ll get it.”

Sviesa struggled as a golem stretched out his arm and gripped his wrist, steadily increasing the pressure until he felt the grinding crunch and white-hot pain shoot up his arm. He tried to thrash wildly, but the golems pinned him, he tried to scream, but it just merged with dying screams of the Daitya felled by the golems. Through the blur of pain, Sviesa heard his former colleague continue talking, “You didn’t know I could do this, did you? Thought I needed the song, didn’t you? We wanted to keep this a secret, surprise you when we had our backs to the wall.”

He felt another cracking, crunching squeeze as the golem destroyed his other wrist, and when he emerged from the pain, the bastard was still talking, “Some team leader you were. Fucking only cared about your little Aramevo friend. Only wanted us around as body shields and to show off too. Well, good fucking luck showing off without your magic hands.”

Another wave of pain hit him, and Sviesa felt his awareness ebb. The pain was there, but it belonged to something else. There was noise, but it was coming from a long way away. His frazzled mind finally gave him an answer as darkness filled his sight; shock. He was physically and mentally past his limits, his brain was shutting down.

He faintly heard a scream, someone begging and then a wet sucking noise and then everything came rushing back. Light and sound and pain and Sotet was there covered in blood and pain and Danak was collapsing on the ground, but most of all there was painpainPAIN. 

Cradling his ruined arms close to his chest, Sviesa felt the gentle hand on his shoulder and heard the voice, “Its fine, I’m here now. It’ll be ok. I got them. I’ll just, just give me a second.”  
The same wet sucking sound played back in his ears and the pain receded, letting him get his thoughts back in order. 

“Sotet?” His voice was croaky and soft, he’d damaged something screaming, “But…Shtark, where?”  
“Dead, I killed him,” a quick grin shone through his mask of concentration, controlled absorption was a skill Sotet hadn’t quite mastered, as he saw the look on Sviesa’s face, “You don’t need to look at me like that. He was working with the Daitya, that’s how they knew where to find us. You’re worth a lot of money to the right people.”

The pain was almost entirely gone as Sviesa grinned up at him, “I can’t help it, people just want me. No need to feel jealous.”

“If you’re good enough to make those terrible jokes, then you’re good enough to run for your life. Anyway, we both know I’m too good for you,” the look of disdain Sotet shot him at his teasing flirt was so intense Sviesa was half surprised that the grass around him didn’t catch fire. He let out a laugh as he was hauled up, almost drowning out what Sotet said next, “So, there were two traitors with us then? Or were there three? I mean, I could be wrong but Danak didn’t look like he was helping you at all.”

“We can talk about that later. Kop’s still out there, and I don’t know how many more Daitya,” Sviesa shook his head almost blacking out as a wave of exhaustion blew over him, “How many more are we looking at?”

Sotet ducked under his arm so they were standing back to back, “I got two, so there’s maybe thirteen from my way. I’m counting three left standing here, but one of those is fucking Kop. You got any magic left in there? Or am I going to have to put in all the effort again?”

Another surge of tiredness washed over Sviesa as the Daitya began emerging from the town, “Enough for one good shot, then it’s all for you. Sorry.”

Sotet ignored his yawn and gave a shrill laugh, full of nerves and defiance, “Let’s let ‘em close then. You can blast ‘em and I’ll drain the rest. Just like old times, eh? Two of us against the world.”  
The Daitya surrounded them, keeping a distance, but still menacing. Pinpricks of light flashed in his head as Sviesa readied up his final blast. The shadows around them grew deeper and darker as Sotet funnelled his magic and the magic he stole from Danak and Shtark into it, readying it for the killing blow. 

Sviesa’s grin matched Kops as the Warmaster came striding into the circle of his men. He stood stock still as the bastard strode up to him until they were standing a breath away from each other. He felt Sotet tense at his back and knew the moment would come soon. There. Kop opened his mouth to speak and was cut off as a blast of magic enhanced fire seared his face off.  
Or at least that was the plan. As the fire roared out, a wave of shadow rose up, between Sviesa and Kop, swallowing it whole. He tried to spin around but a kick to the knee sent him stumbling into Kop’s waiting hands. He was wrenched around, made to look into the eyes of his oldest friend. When he spoke, Sviesa’s question came out garbled as the exhaustion, Sotet’s absorption, reared its head again, “Sotet, why?”

It was apparently the wrong question to ask, if the rage it spawned in Sotet was any indication, “The Caw are everything wrong with the world! You and everyone else supports them in this bloody war! They control us from behind the scenes, they’re the reason that the Aramevo are so fucking rare! They were scared, so they fucking exterminated my people! Well you know what? We’ll wipe them out, return the favour and make a better tomorrow in a clean sweep. We’ll make good use of you. Your father, the bloody king, will do everything we say when you’re our guest, and all we’ll ask them to do is wait out the war. Without them, the other races will stop supporting those bastards too. We’ll have a victory over those puppeteers and then everyone will know we were right.” 

Sotet visibly shook himself, shaking off his rage as easily as he’d absorbed his magic. Then, as the waves of exhaustion started to drown him, Sviesa heard Sotet’s mocking voice croon one last thing, “The heroic servant betraying the evil prince, defender of a corrupted society. What d’ya think? Sounds like something out of a bleeding spirit story, don’t it?”

**Author's Note:**

> So yeah, that's it. If you have any question, criticisms or comments on anything I did in this then please let me know. I appreciate all helpful feedback I can get. Thanks for reading, I hope it was worth it.


End file.
